Ivanti Services Director

Overview

Ivanti Services Director is the centralized control plane for orchestrating large-scale deployments of Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager (vTM) instances. With built-in support for automation, multi-tenancy and usage-based licensing, Services Director enables organizations to scale application delivery infrastructure dynamically, without adding operational complexity. Its RESTful APIs allow seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines and orchestration frameworks, reducing manual overhead.

Services Director provides elastic scalability across hybrid environments and consistent enforcement of performance and security policies. This ensures that application delivery remains reliable, secure and optimized, regardless of scale or complexity.

Services Director delivers significant business value by accelerating time to market, reducing infrastructure costs, right-sizing ADCs to minimize overprovisioning and offering flexible licensing models that scale with organizational growth. By streamlining the deployment and management of application delivery infrastructure, it enables teams to respond quickly to changing demands while maintaining cost efficiency and operational agility.

Highlights

• Scalability: Create elastic ADC services on demand, which can cluster to massive scale
• Agility: Bring new services to market more quickly, adapting capacity to meet demand
• Management and Control: Orchestrate Layer 7 services within a virtualized architecture
• Dramatic Cost Savings: Optimize resources with enterprise-capacity management and usage model
• Powerful Graphical Analytics: Intuitive graphical tools for deep insight into end-to-end traffic flows, with optional Enterprise Management tools

A New Approach to Application Delivery

As a foundational element of the Ivanti Virtual Application Delivery Controller (vADC) solution, Services Director works with Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager (vTM), a software-based application delivery controller that supports fast, reliable and secure user experiences across web and cloud applications. It also works with Ivanti Web Application Firewall (WAF) for integrated application-layer (L-7) security and threat protection.

Together, these components provide a unified solution for modern application delivery, orchestration and protection. This combination helps organizations accelerate digital transformation, reduce operational complexity and ensure consistent performance across the enterprise.

Component	Primary Function	Key Capabilities
Services Director	Centralized orchestration and license management	Optimized provisioning, multitenancy, REST API automation, visibility and reporting
Virtual Traffic Manager	Application delivery and traffic optimization	Layer 7 load balancing, SSL offload, caching, compression, TrafficScript customization
Web Application Firewall	Application-layer (L7) security	OWASP threat protection, bot mitigation, PCI-DSS compliance, anomaly detection

Applications are now the center of the business world. A key ingredient for fast, reliable applications is the Application Delivery Controller (ADC). It accelerates transactions, maximizes availability, maintains security policies and provides a point of control to monitor and manage application traffic.

However, most ADCs on the market today are not designed for large-scale virtual or cloud deployments: their static architectures make them cumbersome and time-consuming to deploy and manage in virtualized and cloud environments.

There is a need for new dynamic architectures that remove bottlenecks and deliver improved agility, high automation levels and faster time to service. At Ivanti, this new architecture is called ADC-as-a-Service (ADCaaS).

• Reduce provisioning time for ADC services from weeks to minutes
• Provide better user experience with per-application tuning and multi-tenancy
• Deliver better security and performance through isolation and scale
• Right-size ADCs and save up to 50% in costs compared to fixed capacity ADC instances

Reliable Support Options

Ivanti Essential Support

• Provides 24x7 access to Ivanti Technical Support expertise, reducing time to resolution
• Provides unmatched expertise in data center networking to optimize network performance
• Simplifies management through online technical support tools

Key Features

• Complete ADC lifecycle management
• Faster time to service, reducing provisioning times from weeks to minutes
• SDN-ready to support orchestrated rollouts
• ADC automation using REST APIs
• Right-sized ADCs to reduce overprovisioning
• Re-allocate ADC resources to meet changes in workload
• Usage-based business model for improved ROI
• Comprehensive enterprise management tools with powerful analytics

Ivanti Services Director: How It Works

The Ivanti Services Director lets you automatically provision, deploy, license, meter and manage the inventory of thousands of application Delivery Controllers in an as-a-service model, using the Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager as the core application delivery platform.

Provisioning

The Ivanti Services Director provisions individual instances of Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager within a hosted virtual environment. Alternatively, Services Director can register externally deployed instances within your own data center or hybrid cloud environment.

Licensing

Each instance is licensed automatically to define the capacity and capability of each instance based on the needs of each application. Ivanti Services Director manages the inventory of vADC instances and ensures that total allocated capacity remains within the overall bulk licensed capacity.

Metering

The Ivanti Services Director tracks each instance and creates usage reports for monitoring and billing, and longer-term capacity planning. Enterprises can use this information to cross-charge to each business unit or application owner.

Feature Summary

Flexible and on-demand licensing

Why pay for ADC capacity you do not need or use? Ivanti Services Director takes the guesswork out of sizing application delivery services, so there is no need to pre-purchase ADC capacity in advance. Start small, and add new licensed capacity only when you need it. With this usage-based business model, you are in control of your costs.

Enterprise Scalability

Ivanti Services Director can manage the lifecycle of thousands of ADC instances under the same shared resourcing pool. With a high-level view of ADC utilization across data center and cloud deployments, it helps manage application delivery services across all applications with a common resource model.

Agile ADC provisioning

Deploy application delivery services in minutes, and exactly where needed to reduce time to market for new applications and services. Create new ADC instances on a per-application or per-tenant basis instantly, start and stop instances for service migration and pre-provision ADC instances for faster instant-on services.

High-density multi-tenancy and isolation

With Ivanti Services Director, you can right-size and scale in multi-tenant environments while maintaining isolation on a per-application or per-tenant basis. This reduces noisy-neighbor performance concerns while maximizing ADC utilization and investment.

Lightweight ADC services

With support for a range of deployment options, Ivanti Services Director can deploy lightweight ADC services within a managed host environment. Alternatively, Services Director can license and monitor externally deployed ADC services and clusters for large-scale applications.

Automated service metering

Ivanti Services Director maintains a database of all ADC instances and the license allocated to each ADC. It also maintains an audit trail of which ADC services have been deployed, records throughput and peak data rate, and provides integrated billing records that enable chargeback to individual client applications.

Reallocate resources to match demand

Because Ivanti Services Director keeps track of ADC resources used and actual throughput used by each application, it is easy to reallocate resources to meet changes in workload. As application needs change through seasonal or periodic cycles, application delivery resources can be reassigned without purchasing extra capacity unless total usage exceeds the overall licensed capacity.

Open APIs

Ivanti Services Director integrates directly into network and service provisioning systems with a REST-based API. It can register an externally managed instance of Ivanti Virtual Traffic Manager or build a dedicated ADC on demand with a unique name, control ports, admin credentials and a license key.

Reporting and Service Visibility

Ivanti Services Director includes reports that provide point-in-time information on utilization for service resources. These reports gather metrics from Traffic Managers registered with Services Director and present them in the Services Director graphical console for review and capacity planning.

• Traffic Manager Status Report: Summary of all Traffic Manager instances managed by Services Director, grouped by feature packs and by status.
• CPU Utilization Report: Detailed review of CPU utilization and aggregated throughput data on a per-host basis for all instances managed by Services Director.
• Throughput Utilization Report: Displays overall utilization of managed and externally deployed ADC instances, both incoming and outgoing data throughput.
• Bandwidth Allocation Report: Snapshot of current bandwidth allocation, grouped by type of instance and type of license.

Powerful Graphical Analytics

With the optional Analytics Application, Ivanti Services Director helps you discover a new perspective on applications with an analytical application that provides insights into end-to-end traffic flows. Services Director helps you explore and visualize traffic flows to develop actionable insights and optimize applications.

Visualize traffic flows

Tree view lets you visualize where traffic is coming from and how it flows through applications, clusters and servers.

At a glance

Quickly find out which applications are missing their performance SLAs.

Identify Performance Bottlenecks

Identify application bottlenecks using the horseshoe chart and focus on problem areas.

Combination charts

Link performance metrics to connection statistics to discover how applications respond under load.

Microsecond Timing

Drill down through raw data to individual transactions for accurate connection tracing.

Enterprise Management Features

Ivanti Services Director offers tools to help IT professionals manage large numbers of Traffic Managers, including graphical analytics and centralized logging. The Graphical Analytics capabilities are enabled through optional add-on feature packs.

Powerful Graphical Analytics

Intuitive graphical analysis gives insight into end-to-end traffic flows and transactions, helping teams understand traffic across the vTM estate and identify performance problems and application issues.

Analytics Data Export

Export analytical data streams from Traffic Managers and stream to a central data store for analysis and filtering, using the built-in Analytics Application or your own data mining tools.

Centralized Logging

Collate log data from all Traffic Managers across all applications in one place, aggregating data from each member of a cluster for analysis in a single view.

Centralized Backup/Restore

Set backup and restore policies centrally from Services Director; no need to manage backups for each individual Traffic Manager.

Centralized Authentication Profiles

Set authentication profiles and policies centrally from Services Director and define profiles to be applied during provisioning of Traffic Managers.

Enterprise and Service Provider Licensing

Ivanti Services Director introduces a different approach for license key management for application delivery controllers. It manages the complete lifecycle of Ivanti vADC products: deployment, licensing, metering, inventory management and performance monitoring.

Ivanti Services Director keeps track of overall bandwidth capacity and allows capacity to be dynamically reallocated to suit workload requirements. There is no fixed limit to the number of instances that can be deployed within the overall licensing pool.

A different licensing model is available for organizations that wish to resell application delivery services using Ivanti Services Director. These organizations, termed Cloud Service Providers by Ivanti, are subject to a separate Service Provider agreement and licensing model. For more information, please contact your account manager.

Ivanti Services Director Bandwidth Packs

Bandwidth Packs

Ivanti Services Director introduces Bandwidth Packs, providing a pool of deployable bandwidth. Each Base Bandwidth Pack adds to this pool, and each deployed instance reserves a portion for its own exclusive use. Each bandwidth pack must be associated with a specific Services Director license and can be used in a cluster of Services Directors.

Any combination of Traffic Manager sizes may be deployed. The only limit is the total deployable throughput capacity defined by the Bandwidth Packs purchased. This means you can draw an unlimited number of Traffic Manager instances, subject to the overall licensed bandwidth limits.

Feature Tiers

In addition to the standard base Bandwidth Pack, Ivanti Services Director is available in two key feature tiers: Advanced Edition and Enterprise Edition. Resource pools are created for each feature tier, and each resource pool can be allocated across as many ADC instances as needed. However, each ADC instance can draw from only a single type of resource pool; resource pools cannot be merged or combined.

Advanced Edition includes common load balancing capabilities, including SSL/TLS offload, session persistence, service level monitoring, simple TrafficScript Rule Builder, and support for IPv6 and HTTP/2. It also includes Global Load Balancing, Route Health Injection, and customization using Ivanti TrafficScript scripting language and Java Extensions.

Enterprise Edition adds premium L7 services such as Web Content Optimization (WCO), Web Application Firewall (WAF), Enhanced UDP Traffic Management, and FIPS compliance.

Example Feature Tiers

To visualize the allocation of bandwidth packs to vADC instances, imagine three different bandwidth packs creating the following pools:

• 20 Gbps of Advanced vADC capacity
• 10 Gbps of Enterprise vADC capacity
• 5 Gbps of Analytics capacity

Example deployed instances:

• 4 x 4Gbps Advanced
• 2 x 2Gbps Enterprise
• 2 x 2Gbps Enterprise + Analytics

After allocating these instances, 4 Gbps Advanced capacity and 2 Gbps Enterprise capacity remain available. The Analytics pool has 1 Gbps remaining, which can be allocated if required.

Services Director Flexible Capacity Bandwidth Packs
Throughput	2G, 5G, 20G
SSL/TLS TPL	Uncapped
Functionality	Choose from Advanced or Enterprise Editions
Deployment Model	Choose from Software or Virtual Appliance
License Style	Choose from Perpetual or Subscription

Ivanti Services Director Functionality Matrix

Functionality	Advanced Edition	Enterprise Edition
Ivanti vTM	Y	Y
Ivanti Services Director	Y	Y
Load Balancing	Y	Y
HTTP/2 Support	Y	Y
Content Routing	Y	Y
Health Monitoring	Y	Y
Simple TrafficScript Rule Builder	Y	Y
SSL/TLS Offload	Y	Y
HTTP Compression	Y	Y
Event and Action System	Y	Y
Service Protection	Y	Y
Activity Graphs	Y	Y
HTTP Caching	Y	Y
Autoscale	Y	Y
XML Parsing	Y	Y
Bandwidth Management	Y	Y
Enhanced Traffic Support (ETS)	Y	Y
Rate Shaping	Y	Y
Service Level Monitoring	Y	Y
TrafficScript	Y	Y
Java Extensions	Y	Y
Multi-Site Manager	Y	Y
Global Load Balancing	Y	Y
Route Health Injection	Y	Y
Web Accelerator Express	N/A	Y
Web Accelerator	N/A	Y
Web Application Firewall	N/A	Y
Enterprise Authentication	N/A	Y
FIPS	N/A	Y
Centralized Logging	Y	Y
Centralized Backup/Restore	Y	Y
Centralized Authentication Profiles	Y	Y

Additional Licensing Notes

Licensing Note	Description
Production License Keys	Production Services Director licenses and bandwidth packs may be used for production traffic, so long as bandwidth packs are used exclusively with the associated Services Director license. vADC services may not be directly resold to any third party without the appropriate cloud service provider license. All licenses are subject to the Ivanti End User License Agreement.
Evaluation License Keys	An evaluation or trial requires a Services Director license key, Bandwidth Packs for Traffic Manager, and any additional Feature Packs. Evaluation license keys may not be used to process production traffic.
Perpetual Licenses	Perpetual licenses provide a perpetual license key that may be used up to the licensed limit. Support and software upgrades are not included with a perpetual license and can be obtained by paying an annual support fee.
Subscription Licenses	Subscription licenses allow the software to be used for a period of time and require payment of a subscription fee up front for that term. Subscription licenses include support and maintenance for the duration of the subscription.
High Availability	Ivanti recommends that all Bandwidth Packs are associated with the license key of a single Services Director in the cluster. If that Services Director is temporarily unavailable, an associated Bandwidth Pack will continue to be valid as long as the Services Director is a member of the cluster.
Grace Period	Licensed Traffic Managers enter a grace period if Ivanti Services Director becomes temporarily unreachable. If instances remain running while no Services Directors are available for licensing, they enter the grace period and maintain licensed features until that grace period expires.
Community Edition	If a Traffic Manager instance does not have a valid license key, then it will run as a Community Edition. Community Edition Traffic Managers cannot be managed by Services Director, and there is no Community Edition for Services Director itself.
Performance Limits	The maximum capacity of each Traffic Manager is set at deployment time, and Services Director can be used to modify the performance of each Traffic Manager at any time. The host hardware must be adequately specified in order to deliver the desired performance.
Expired Licenses	Perpetual licenses do not expire. Other licenses issued by Ivanti have an expiration date. Once a Bandwidth Pack expiration date has passed, there must be sufficient capacity in the remaining bandwidth packs to service all deployed instances.

System Requirements

Ivanti Services Director is available both as software and as a virtual appliance. It can support instances of Ivanti Traffic Manager hosted on a wider range of platforms, provided there is network connectivity to support management and communication. Ivanti Services Director can also support an external analytics engine for application data export. This is optional and required only to support the Analytics Application.

Ivanti Services Director: Virtual Appliance
Virtual Appliance - Hypervisor	Virtual Appliance Editions VMware vSphere 8.0 QEMU/KVM (Ubuntu 24.04) Cloud Platforms Amazon EC2 - as a virtual appliance or native
Virtual Appliance - Database	MySQL 5.5, MySQL 5.6 (recommended)
Virtual Appliance - Other Services	SMTP
Virtual Appliance - Recommended CPU	vCPU
Virtual Appliance - Minimum Memory	8GB
Virtual Appliance - Minimum Disk Space	46GB
Analytics Engine
Analytics Engine (Optional)	Only required if using Analytics Application and Data Export (Data Export requires Ivanti Traffic Manager version 17.2 or above)
Ivanti Services Director: Software
Operating System	Ubuntu 18.04 (x86_64); RHEL/CentOS 6 (x86_64)
Database	MySQL 5.5, MySQL 5.6 (recommended)
Other Services	SMTP
Recommended Hardware: CPU	Intel Xeon / AMD Opteron
Recommended Hardware: Minimum Memory	2GB
Recommended Hardware: Minimum Disk Space	10GB plus additional disk space for metering logs, depending on number of instances metered
Managed vTM Instances
OS supported for managed instances	Ubuntu 18.04 (x86_64); CentOS 6.5 (x86_64)
OS supported for externally managed instances	Other operating systems are supported for externally managed instances. See the Ivanti Traffic Manager datasheet for details (requires Ivanti Traffic Manager version 9.5 or above).